As before, it will be convenient to deal first with the names of his characters.
Oberon is the English transliteration of the French Auberon in the romance of Huon of Bordeaux, and Auberon
is probably merely the French counterpart of Alberich or Albrich, a dwarf occurring in the German Nibelungenlied and other works. Etymologically Alberich is composed of alb = elf and rich = king. The name Oberon appears first in English literature in Lord Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1534), and afterwards in Spenser[[27]] and in Robert Greene's play James IV, which was acted in 1589.[[28]] But the king of the fairies in Chaucer[[29]] is Pluto, and the queen Proserpine.
Titania. Proserpine is the wife of Pluto (in Greek, form, Persephone, wife of Dis). In Elizabethan times, Campion's charming poem "Hark, all you ladies that do sleep"[[30]] keeps the name of "the fairy-queen Proserpina." Shakespeare appears to have taken the name Titania from Ovid,[[31]] who uses it as an epithet of Diana, as being the sister of Sol or Helios, the Sun-god, a Titan. Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft,[[32]] gives Diana as one of the names of the "lady of the fairies"; and James I, in his
Demonology (1597) refers to a "fourth kind of sprites, which by the Gentiles was called Diana and her wandering court, and amongst us called the Phairie."
Curiously enough in Shakespeare's most famous description of the Fairy Queen, she is called Queen Mab;[[33]] this is said to be of Celtic derivation. Mercutio's catalogue of Mab's attributes and functions corresponds closely with the description of Robin Goodfellow.
Puck is strictly not a proper name; and in the quartos and folios of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Puck, Robin, and Robin Goodfellow are used indiscriminately. In no place in the text is he addressed as "Puck"; it is always "Robin"[[34]] (once[[35]] "Goodfellow" is added). In the last lines of the play he twice refers to himself as "an honest Puck" and "the Puck," [[36]] showing that the word is originally a substantive. Dr. J.A.H. Murray has very kindly allowed the slips of the New English Dictionary which contain notes for the article 'Puck' to be inspected; his treatment of the word will be awaited with much interest. The earliest and most important reference is to Prof. A.S. Napier's Old English Glosses (1900), 191, where in a list of glosses of the eleventh century to Aldhelm's Aenigmata
occurs "larbula [i. e. larvula], puca." Prof. Napier notes that O.E. pūca, "a goblin," whence N.E. Puck, is a well authenticated word. Dr. Bradley suggests that the source might be a British word, from which the Irish púca would be borrowed; this word pooka, as well as the allied poker, has already been treated in the N.E.D. Puck, pouke, we find in O.E. (Old English Miscellany, E.E.T.S., 76), in Piers Plowman, and surviving in Spenser; but there are countless analogous forms: puckle, pixy, pisgy, in English, and perhaps (through Welsh) bug, the old word for bugbear, bogy, bogle, etc.; puki in Icelandic; pickel in German; and many more.[[37]]
We may note here the euphemistic tendency to call powerful spirits by propitiatory names. Just as the Greeks called the Furies "Eumenides," the benevolent ones, so is Robin called Good-fellow; the ballad of Tam Lin[[38]] refers to them as "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[[39]] term a fairy "a woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation to the neo-Greek nereids.[[40]] Hence also "sweet puck."[[41]] The names of the four attendant
fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed, are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness, speed, and smallness.